Okhrana

The Okhrana ("Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order") was the czarist secret police force of the Russian Empire that existed from 1881 to 1917. Emperor Aleksandr III of Russia created the Okhrana with the purpose of combatting left-wing revolutionary activity and terrorism, and the Okhrana's leaders Dmitry Sipyagin and Vyacheslav von Plehve were themselves assassinated by the SR Combat Organization. The Okhrana used methods such as torture, immunity, and bribery to gain contacts within the SRs and other socialist revolutionaries, and they had some high-ranking contacts within some socialist movements. The Okhrana was dissolved in 1917 after the Russian Revolution.